Pentagon frustration over defence production delays boils over

Senior US military officials expressed concern about the pace at which the defence industry is making weapons deliveries today at a Navy conference in Virginia.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that if the war in Ukraine continues to rage in another six to twelve months, it might be “challenging” for the defense-industrial base to produce enough arms to fulfill both US needs and anticipated arms shipments to Ukraine, according to a defenceOne report from the event, National Review reports.

Some of the Pentagon’s frustrations with industry boiled over in comments made by US Fleet Forces commander Admiral Daryl Caudle, who said that he’s “not forgiving of the defenceindustrial base” because it’s “not delivering the ordnance we need.”

Increased pressure on supply chains from the Covid pandemic, as well as heightened production in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, are widely cited as factors that have snarled defense-industry production.

But, according to defenceOne, Caudle, who is frustrated by delivery delays involving torpedoes and the SM-6 anti-aircraft and anti-ship missile, said, “We’ve all got tough jobs.”

Since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Washington has burned through several years’ worth of production of the Stinger and Javelin missiles that are widely credited with empowering Kyiv to withstand the Russian assault. The transfer of those, and other systems, to Taiwan has reportedly been subject to a massive, yearslong backlog.

Biden administration officials say they’re working to address production delays, as it was reported for National Review in December: "The delay of those, and other, deliveries to Taiwan — including Harpoon anti-ship missiles, HIMARS (high — mobility artillery-rocket systems), and howitzers — has been a second-tier congressional foreign-policy controversy over the past year or so that has not dramatically spilled into public view until recently. But a new push is now under way at the Pentagon and in the defenceindustry to work in concert and plug some of the most glaring gaps. Lockheed is in the process of doubling its Javelin production to about 4,000 annually and similarly boosting the number of HIMARS. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, during a Reagan [Forum] panel, pointed to a battery of new contracts that her organization has rolled out to replenish weapons stocks: NASAMS air-defencesystems, Excalibur guided-artillery shells, and 155-millimeter ammunition are all part of the larger production push".

While Caudle believes that the defenceindustry should be doing more, executives of larger publicly held firms say that they’re doing as much as the Pentagon has enabled them to do, given their fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Whatever the reason for these delays, there could be profound consequences for America’s national-defenceaims and the foreign-policy debate in Washington, as Del Toro suggested.